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Crimson Rosella Platycercus elegans |
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Australia
The Crimson Rosella is distributed in Australia in the east and south-east but excluding Tasmania. It is found in forests and woodlands as well as scrublands and gardens. |
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It feeds mainly on seeds but
also eats blossoms and fruits of trees and bushes as well as
orchard fruits.
There is a wide variety of plumages and I will deal with one main sub-species, Yellow Rosella P. e. flaveolus on a separate page. Here you can see an adult P. e. elegans in photo 1, an immature of this sub-species in photo 4 and a sub-adult still showing a bit of green in photo 3. |
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Photo 2, taken on Kangaroo Island, South Australia, shows an adult of the race P.e. melanoptera which is a darker red with narrower red edgings so generally has more black on the back. I must admit that I think the difference is quite a subtle one. The difference is more pronounced when compared with the race P. e. nigrescens of north-east Queensland, seen in photos 5 and 6, which is darker as well as smaller that the other races. | |||
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The first bird that I encountered was this immature bird on the Great Ocean Road in Victoria. I couldn't work out what it was - another species new to science perhaps - until I got back to my field guide and discovered that it was a Crimson Rosella. It's just so very different from the adult. | |||
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